the corner office : tech blog

An old Steve Yegge post I'd never read before: Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret

Illtyperacy is the bastard incest child hiding in the industry's basement

I learned to touch-type when I was doing my articles. KPMG had this thing where they would give you a stiffy disk with a typing tutor program (Mac) on it and the deal was that if you learned to type at a certain WPM then you'd not have to pay for the software. I was young and skint (and naive enough) to think (and worry) that they'd actually follow up on the software fees, so I did the lessons and learned how to touch-type, long before I started writing software for a living.

And I don't think they ever remembered to charge anyone for the software. A minor and early lesson in organisational dynamics, that was.

The one thing I never did, though, was persist with the number row, and that remains my one weakish spot. After reading Yegge's article, I'm inspired to go back and sort that out.

Carol S. Dweck: Is Math a Gift? Beliefs That Put Females at Risk.

An interesting paper linked mainly for the missus who takes an interest in these things, but also apropos some of the stuff we're encountering with our son, who's fairly ahead of the pack when it comes to maths at school. It's a fine line to walk between encouraging and helping to develop an aptitude and inculcating the idea that it won't mean squat without a lot of hard work and follow-through. Also goes back to this recent post on my main blog.

TED: Raffaello D'Andrea: The astounding athletic power of quadcopters

The new Chrome start page with the search bar and annoying logo and smaller 'recent' pages doesn't work for me. How to disable it and go back to the old way (via):

1. go to chrome://flags

2. Find "Enable Instant Extended API", change to 'Disabled'

Disruptor has been kicking around for a while, but this week I heard it mentioned twice. Despite having a tenuous ex-colleagues-of-ex-colleagues kind of link to the platform, I've never had a strong interest in it. Perhaps it's time to change that. The main question that comes to mind (which I gather is dealth with), is what about the garbage?

IBM is allowed to be evil.

(via)

SO: Which Actor model library/framework for Java? for future reference, including further links/papers.

Dusted off my old 'metalib' project. I'm reading and checksumming the contents of directory trees, and then importing the details into a db. Notes:

• The file reading was being done with python (os.walk and friends) and the uploading with java - after all manner of python encoding headaches, I reverted to java for file reading too. It wasn't a bad choice - it's given me a chance to play around with some Java 7 nio additions, all pretty cool.

• I got worried about hurting my MySQL server (hidden away on a VirtualBox VM), and set up a local H2 server. What an impressive bit of software, from the code to the website and documentation. I could do everything in MySQL mode, so my schemas worked out the box, and zippy as can be. My only gripe is that the DB is saved as a single big file, which is less useful for seeing table sizes. That, I think, I can live with.

• my machine can generate md5sums (using Guava) at a rate of about 45 MB/s. CPU usage hardly lifts, which tells me that CPUs have come a very long way, and hard drives haven't, since mucking around with hdparm more than a decade ago. Hrm.

Bruce Eckel's (infamous "failed experiment") thoughts on unchecked exceptions, for posterity:

• Does Java need Checked Exceptions?

• Artima: The Trouble with Checked Exceptions

Clicking around the interwebs I came across f.lux. This is an app which tweaks your display at night to make colours warmer and reduce the amount of blue light emitted by your screen. Blue light (a la daylight) keeps you more awake and alert, and the idea is that reducing the amount of blue light you see reduces the potential disruption to your sleep patterns. Let's just say that the oops-I-should've-been-in-bed-3-hours-ago habit is one I need to break, so I'm giving it a go.